Since Grandma didn’t have anything worth writing a hundred years ago today, I’ll share a fun tidbit about watermelons that I found in the June 1911 issue of Pure Food Magazine.

Watermelons furnish a delicious and most healthful luxury for the hot season. They keep the system cool, and help to ward off fever. That is why nature has supplied them so bountifully to us during the warm season. The name “watermelon” is most appropriate for it is nearly all water—91.9 percent. Hence, it is also an excellent thirst quencher. Its other nutriments add wonderfully to its healthfulness. . . The water you get in the watermelon ripened on the vine contains no impurities.

I’m always learning new things from doing this blog. Today I learned that when people worried about water quality a hundred years ago, that one alternative to drinking the water was to eat watermelon.

Next time I’m somewhere with questionable water I’ll just have to hope that watermelons are available.

10 Responses

Definitely a more healthy way to have pure water than Colonial times. In Colonial times even children would drink alcoholic beverages to make sure that there were no impurities in what they drank. I have a funny watermelon eating picture that I will share someday.

Hello

I look forward to sharing my grandmother's diary with relatives and friends. Helena Muffly (Swartz) kept a diary from 1911-1914. She was 15 years old when she began this diary. I plan to post these entries one day at a time—exactly 100 years after she wrote them. I hope you enjoy this glimpse back to a slower paced time.

The header is a picture of the farm where my grandmother lived when she wrote this diary. It is located in Northumberland County in central Pennsyvlania about a mile outside of McEwenvsille. My father said that the buildings look similar to what they looked like when he was a child.